Friday, 8 November 2013

The day peace was forged brought a promise of redemption for us all. Clearly aware of the timing, those involved in the talks pushed beyond the
midnight hour to a conclusion on 10 April 1998. It was a Good Friday, in every
sense of the name.

The outcome was officially entitled ‘The
Agreement,’ yet we hailed it as the Good Friday Agreement, basking in that
‘feel good’ designation and remarking on the contrast with the blood-soaked
days that preceded it – Bloody Friday, Bloody Sunday and more from a lengthy calendar
of horror.

So we breathed a collective sigh of relief as
dawn broke and cheered again when the Good Friday Agreement was sealed by
popular vote throughout the island. However, we wavered when it was delivered
for action because, by then, we had begun to forget what it was called.

The Irish Times began designating it the
Belfast Agreement, as if its intrinsic value was vested in a place. This
suggested that if you simply changed venue, you could change the outcome. But
even the subsequent St Andrews Agreement failed to fire the popular imagination.
It was mere housekeeping with the reminder that the Good Friday Agreement was still
the ‘only show in town’.

The ‘Belfast Agreement’ certainly had
its proponents and foremost among them were the opponents, uncomfortable with
the positive connotations of a Good Friday Agreement.

The ‘Belfast Agreement’ was also upheld by
pedantic commentators, insisting that similar accords are called after the
place in which they are agreed – Treaty of Versailles etc. Yet
what we had was not ‘site specific’ to Belfast, another treaty to be added to a
catalogue of place-name accords. It was more than an armistice between
belligerents or even a treaty between sovereign powers.

It was endorsed by the Irish, British
and American governments, by the European Union and all its constituent members, as well as by other governments,
religious leaders and people of goodwill throughout the entire world. However, our
Good Friday Agreement was also an unprecedented accord between all the people
of Ireland to forge a better future for all of us and to do this in peace. Together
we hailed it as a new model of peace-making.

So most of us persisted doggedly with the
Good Friday Agreement, even against the guiles of media style guides. In one memorable
early purge, the Irish Times – ever- vigilant enforcer of the geographical designation
– pursued it all the way into a report on the Presbyterian General Assembly with one naysayer remarking that the “only Belfast Agreement” he recognised, “was
won for us on the cross by our Saviour”!

Fifteen years on, vigilance is still needed
against those who would unpick what was won for us at the dawn of that Good
Friday. Its promise is still denied by dissidents, including those who by
stealth diminish the name we bestowed on the Agreement in our first
acclamation.

They came after the name; let’s ensure they
don’t succeed in coming after the terms.

Thursday, 3 October 2013

My sons and I still laugh about the ‘water
walla’ at the restaurant in the Little India district of Toronto, Ontario. We
went there for dinner once upon the mid-1990s, tempted by the early bird
special buffet deal on a winter Sunday evening.

The water walla was poised with a
large pitcher less than a discreet distance from our table in the otherwise
empty dining-room. Each time one of us drank some water, he pounced to
replenish the glass. Our early-bird special dining experience became a cat-and-mouse
game of trying to cause a distraction and surreptitiously take a sip without
alerting the hired help.

By the end of the meal, we were kinked up with
laughter. Yet we never went back to dine there again.

I am reminded of the water walla every time
I go online nowadays. And while it is touching to know that Google, Facebook
and all the other conglomerates of the ether-world are anxious to replenish my
glass – while emptying my wallet, no doubt – it has become another cat-and-mouse
game and this one never seems to end.

So time after time, I am proffered pictures
of ‘attractive women 40+’ to tempt me into a dating website; the latest models
of hiking boots to help my getaway fantasies; alluring travel deals for ‘silver
surfers’; and so much more. Frankly it is getting a little embarrassing to
think that a great host of online wallas is waiting to pounce on my every
perceived desire and replenish my glass.

Yet I can’t seem to get up from the table,
settle my bill and leave. And each time I make a choice to do something that is
seemingly innocuous, another little detail of my life goes winging its way to
the wallas.

The ones on Facebook are the most
persistent. They now want to know where I was born, where I live now, where I
went to school and every other possible detail they can winnow from the chaff
of my life. Yet after several years of active Facebooking, I should think it obvious
that, since I have chosen not to ‘complete my profile’, I might want to
maintain some degree of discretion on the private details of my life.

I must have got lost at that point.

So if I want to take a surreptitious sip,
then that is my business, not theirs.

Yet how in heck do they know so much
already? Not that I have ever taken a sip from the proffered, but so obviously
bogus, dating websites offering 'scores of attractive' middle-aged women near where I live (on the faraway Frontier, of course), I am still curious to know how they computed my age
range. At least it saves me the embarrassment of explaining to my partner why the
online Googles are offering me ‘attractive women’ of inappropriate vintage. And
I suppose hiking boots are also less suspicious than other forms of apparel.

I ponder this while the wallas wait,
thinking that like everything else nowadays, it probably has to do with
Logarithms.

Friday, 27 September 2013

In Derry City’s main Post Office yesterday,
I presented a small parcel for postage. The clerk behind the bandit screen
asked where it was going.

‘County Westmeath,’ I replied.

She
consulted her screen and commented, ‘Air mail.’

Thinking I had misheard, I
repeated, ‘Air mail?’ – adding that question mark of astonishment.

The clerk then explained that this postage to Westmeath was 'across the border' and so classified
as an ‘international delivery’. As such, it incurred the same charge as a delivery 'anywhere
else within the European Union'.

In other words, mailing a small parcel to Bridgend in County Donegal, just one mile out the road from Derry, incurs the same cost
as mailing it to Bucharest. Meanwhile, the same parcel could be delivered as ‘domestic’
mail to Brighton or Lerwick at a fraction of the cost.

Somewhat stunned, I forked out the £7.85 demanded
and my parcel was dispatched for its ‘flight’. I immediately regretted that
decision. In future I’ll deliver myself – almost free of charge – to a post
office in Lifford to conduct similar business.

You’ve got to be on top of your game when
you’re living on the Border.

Sunday, 11 August 2013

For the past week,
Castlederg has been near the top of the news agenda. The small frontier town
sits on the most westerly fringe of the United Kingdom, cheek-by-jowl with
Donegal’s Finn Valley in the north-west of Ireland.

This was the
chosen venue for the Tyrone commemoration of its ‘Republican dead’ from the
recent conflict – including 53 IRA activists. The event was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the
death of two IRA men from the Castlederg area who were killed when the bomb they were transporting into the
town exploded prematurely.

The Republican
event caused outrage among members of the Protestant Unionist Loyalist (PUL)
communities as a desecration of the memory of 31 of their family, friends and
neighbours killed by the IRA in the locality. They organised a protest rally to
coincide with the Republican parade.

So on the afternoon of Sunday, 11 August 2013, Castlederg
braced for confrontation at the Ferguson Crescent interface.This is where the town's two
virtually segregated parts meet. They are even designated by distinct names –
Bridgetown, bedecked in union flags and loyalist bunting; and Churchtown, where
the Republican parade would take place along Castlefinn Road and through the
Catholic nationalist estates.

This is what
happened!

(All photos copyright of Darach MacDonald.)

Local Protestant clergymen prepare for the service on The Diamond that was the central feature of their protest.

Tuesday, 23 July 2013

It’s still happening with
Aer Lingus, despite the recent announcement by my airline of choice that it was
inaugurating direct flights from Dublin to Toronto next year1.

Today I got another of
those promotional emails offering me £40 off a return flight on its ‘USA
and Canada’ services. Having commented publicly (on Facebook) about the happy outcome
of a previous Frontier Post blog about the lack of this precise service, I wanted to get in
as early as possible on the fruits of my campaign2.

So
I checked it out and the price was agreeable… even attractive.

I set about placing a
booking for next February. Price still OK, but then I checked the flight
schedule.

Aer Lingus was offering to
fly me over most of eastern Canada and the Great Lakes into the United States
and dump me in Chicago's O’Hare airport again. It would arrange with United Airlines to
then take me back across the Great Lakes to Canada where I wanted to go in the first place.

The real deal.

That’s exactly like offering to fly
me from Dublin to Athens, Greece, and then dumping me in Cairo, Egypt, at the mercy of a third party airline!

It's the same on the return
leg – first west on United Airlines to Chicago, then back east to Dublin!

The duration of the flight
times offered are 12 hours and 59 minutes on the outward flight, and a
staggering 20 hours on the homeward flight!

Given time for all those normal departure and
arrival formalities, that would extract almost two entire days for hanging around airport
terminals and sitting in a flying tin tube from a two-week
vacation!

And given my recent
difficulties with US Customs and Border Protection3,
I would probably have to allow even more flexitime in my schedule for dealing with the ugly face of America on border patrol.

I’m sending an email reply to Aer Lingus right now asking that they send no similar offers to me until they
study the map and see that Canada is not simply somewhere else on the outskirts of the Windy
City… and I’m enclosing this blog post as well!